A 90's Friday Night Lights meets Fifty Shades, only the town is the sadomasochist and the two young lovers their pawns.
July Elizabeth Edwards is stuck in the existence her pretentious, rural East Texas town has allotted her. A shift in social statu...
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The rain was still pounding steadily on my windshield. The storm made the sky look deranged in a brilliant way, and it felt like the entire town was deserted.
I would have thought our driving in silence was an extension of our new norm. All week we had aspired to ignore each other, pretending the party never happened... among other things. I thought there'd be a comfort or familiarity in that...but there was a familiarity of a different kind present.
Sitting next to her in the intimate space of my car, getting to be responsible for her for a moment... It evoked the same feeling I'd been experiencing every time I caught her eyes on mine down the hallway. The way I felt when I grabbed her that day in the office, because I needed to in the moment... I needed her for some reason I couldn't explain.
It was the way I felt when she weighed heavily on my mind because I hadn't seen her in a while, and I didn't know how soon I would see her again. And the air we breathed in my car was thick with that feeling.
I turned onto her street slowly and became disappointed I was already there.
"I'm sorry. I haven't told you where to go." Her voice came out much slower and softer than when she was angry or sarcastic with me.
"I know where you live, July." And so did mine.
"Right. So that house, but three houses down instead, if you don't mind dropping me at-"
"Your grandparents'?"
She turned and smiled at me, nodding to confirm. I liked that smile. I couldn't tell if it was a smile of surprise that I knew that was her grandparents' house, or if it was just the way she looked when she talked about them, like she was excited she was about to see them.
"My moms on a work trip, so no one's home down there. The house is empty." I knew what she meant by that. She was simply informing me, but I couldn't help replaying her soft words over and over in my head as the rain continued to beat down on the driveway we approached.
An entire house empty, and two people who avoid being alone together at all costs. Although I had not yet consciously admitted the reason to myself, it was becoming abundantly clear in the moment and possibilities of the empty house continued to highjack my thoughts.
